


many ways to believe

by preromantics



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-12
Updated: 2010-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-08 21:52:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/79872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Kris," Adam finally says, weighted and startlingly close, and it sounds everything like the invite Kris expected to hear.</i> Based on the ee cummings poem 'it is at moments after i have dreamed'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	many ways to believe

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ: 6/30/2009

_it is at moments after i have dreamed  
of the rare entertainment of your eyes  
when(being a fool to fancy)i have deemed_

/

The house at night is small, unsettlingly quiet. At the very heart the furnace rumbles and the fridge clicks and the clocks tick and the circulating fans whir.

Kris wakes up to the sound of the waves crashing like thunder against the shoreline outside. He wakes up feeling small in his bed which is small in his house and he wakes up alone.

His phone is lit up on the nightstand, bright against his eyes when he reaches over, blinking at the name on the screen.

Adam Lambert, it says.

Kris squints at it, non-sensical three-in-the-morning words and doesn't Adam know normal people sleep at this time of night? He sets the phone down on the pillow next to his head. It slides down when he lays back, connects with his ear and vibrates again, the light throwing shadows on the ceiling.

When he grabs at it, it slips to his shoulder, still vibrating, someone calling -- Adam calling.

It's three am.

Kris squints again, peering up. The shadows of the fan span across the room, reaching down along the walls at him like fingers with nothing to grasp at. He answers the phone.

"Hey, hi." Adam is breathless on the line, rushed.

Kris inhales a little, just through his nose. "Adam," he says, sleep-heavy, questioning, "what?"

There is a moment of silence and Kris twists the sheets around his knuckles, the room gone dark again. He presses his free palm against one eye and then the next until the pressure matches the weight on his chest.

"Kris," Adam finally says, weighted and startlingly close, and it sounds everything like the invite Kris expected to hear.

  
_with your particular mouth my heart made wise;  
at the moment when the glassy darkness holds_

/

It was nothing, back then.

Kris can't help it, the seats in the airport lounge feel like stone at best, and the amount of caffeine in his system is unhealthy.

He can't help just sitting there, phone off, thinking. He thinks of hands, pressed along the width of his shoulder blades, bare skin, and lips on his neck.

It's all wrong -- the suited man in front of him, typing something important and the woman five seats down, patiently coloring with the small child beside her while looking tired with the entire world. She probably even manages to color inside the lines.

He shouldn't be thinking at all, shouldn't be going to see Adam, even.

Indulgence, Katy once said, is fine as long as it's treated as just that -- indulgence. It can't become a belief and it has to have lines.

Kris isn't sure what he believes in. Adam makes him, has always made him, believe in skin and images and stepping off metaphorical cliffs. Kris tried to write a song about it, once.

What he does believe in is not being afraid.

It's easier said than done, of course, but Kris boards his flight and shuts his eyes as soon as he sits down. He doesn't ask for a pillow or a blanket or even a drink.

When he closes his eyes he lets the red glare of the cabin lights behind his eyelids fade to darkness and Adam is right there, always there -- some bright thing just waiting on the edge, waiting for Kris.

He turns on his phone right before take off, after the flight attendants have already asked for phones to be off.  'on my way,' he texts, quick and simple.

Before they reach the end of the air strip,  Adam replies. He's always quick.

'good'

Kris keeps his phone on the entire flight, wondering if anything will happen. Nothing does.

  
_the genuine apparition of your smile  
(it was through tears always)and silence moulds  
such strangeness as mine was a little while;_

/

It's not hard to spot Adam at the airport. He's down by baggage claim and Kris freezes, a little.

He didn't pack anything outside of his carry-on. Adam doesn't seem surprised.

They don't touch, walking past the ticket counters and car rental people with their big grins and the people on line with some vague, simple sense of adventure.

Outside the air is thick, heavier than back home for Kris but not as wet as his home on the shoreline.

He pauses with Adam, watching the way the sun reflects in Adam's glasses and on the tips of his hair and doesn't remember why he didn't come sooner - why it was so hard to believe be would be welcomed back.

A couple outside is in matching states hysteria, crying and clutching and kissing. Kris feels awkward watching, can't tell in his own muddled thoughts if they are happy or sad, but Adam watches with fascination set in the line of his jaw.

Everything is so public outside of LAX. Kris doesn't want to be public, not with Adam standing close enough to touch but not really. He never wanted to be public, to begin with, not with anything but his music. It wasn't up to him what was public, though, in the end. 

Adam brushes against him when they walk again, crossing past traffic and into the parking garage. Kris wants to say something, do something but LA is loud even in the small dosage the airport brings and Adam's lack of talking unnerves him.

Adam opens Kris' door for him, ducks down and presses him against the car's frame, one hand along Kris' neck and he leans there breathing until Kris' own breathing matches the same rhythm.

Kris leans up, first, but Adam presses his lips down before he can get there.

The parking garage is cool and almost moist, conversations echoing from floors above and Adam's mouth is hot and urgent.

Kris gets into the car and leans back with heavy bones and Adam drives fast, catching Kris' eyes enough to steady him back onto the LA pavement.

  
_moments when my once more illustrious arms  
are filled with fascination,when my breast  
wears the intolerant brightness of your charms:_

/

It's too late for lunch but also too early for dinner and Kris stretches out his legs in the car as Adam drives around aimlessly.

They talk, soft, and each word pulls Kris down into his seat and softens the lines of Adam's shoulders.

The beach is mostly crowded when Adam pulls in, tires crunching against the sandy pavement. The car is quieter and smaller when the engine cuts off.

Kris says, "Okay," but doesn't finish his thought. Adam doesn't mind that he stops and that's the part Kris likes best - or, rather, one of the parts. He doesn't need to backtrack or explain himself to Adam. It's just the two of them and even if Adam maybe doesn't understand, he trusts that Kris will work it out eventually.

Kris isn't sure the same logic still applies, tired and true, now that he is back, but he knows the basis is still there. Kris was the one who ran, who was foolish.

There is no solid foundation, anymore, but at least there is framework. Something, maybe, to believe in.

They go to dinner at some pleasant, touristy place and stay for hours. The crowd shifts from families to forty-somethings and the live band swells then slows.

Adam curls his fingers into each of the dips between Kris' own on top of the table. They watch people slow dance in various states of intoxication (whether with alcohol or each other) in between too much food and comfortable conversation.

"Let's go home," Adam says, almost too low for the room, and he looks guarded in a way that makes Kris easily accept.

It's an invitation, again, and this time Kris is quicker than before.

  
_one pierced moment whiter than the rest_

/

The feeling isn't new, but it's not like revisiting anything, either.

Adam is all-encompassing, not all the time, but in certain moments it catches Kris off guard. It's not just his body, pressed over Kris on white cotton sheets, caging him in -- it's his presence. The thought that everything about Adam could be for show but it isn't. It may be carefully broken down but it isn't plastic.

Kris feels made of plastic. Adam molds his skin, bends him to his will. It's the best Kris has felt in as long as he can think.

They don't say anything, not really. Sex isn't about small talk, anyway, (and that's what they are doing - sex -it's not fucking and it's not making love or whatever term could apply but doesn't. In fact, it's not even anything, it's Adam and Kris and skin and hundreds of other things - but it doesn't have a label, not really.)

Adam snaps his hips, curls his fingers and Kris drifts in and out of the present until Adam says his name.

"Kris," he says, always some sort of meaning behind it like no one else in Kris' life has ever been able to convey.

Kris feels real. He bites at the dip below Adam's neck, tastes and tries to give back what Adam is giving to him.

When he comes it's blinding, white and detached.

Not only does Kris feel real (and unsure and tired,) Adam feels real, too. His weight is comforting not crushing and he laughs into Kris' neck, hot.

"Missed you," Adam says.

Kris swallows, sliding down and against Adam's chest, moving slick with sweat. He finds Adam's eyes, always there, and just looks at him.

"Hey," he says, on an inhale after a few beats and Adam grins quick at him. "Hey," he repeats, soft and grinning back, "I missed you, too."

  
_-turning from the tremendous lie of sleep  
i watch the roses of the day grow deep_

/

Adam's house at night is large in the way Kris' run away house never could be. It doesn't make quiet noises; instead, the neighbors make loud arguing statements and the road makes grand, siren calls.

Kris wakes up to the a phone ringing and fire engines blaring in the distance. Adam makes sleep noises and turns over, reaching back like an afterthought to settle a twisted arm along the curve of Kris' hip.

When Adam wakes, too, Kris will probably have many thoughts and Adam will have opinions on each. The fact and the future don't keep Kris awake - he just lays there, watching the sun come in through the blinds and measuring his breaths against Adam's.

There is no major point to everything, all of it, no plot Kris is trying to follow. The main thing is, he feels, is he believed in not being afraid and he wasn't. That's the whole idea. To believe in something --even an indulgence -- is to not just say it's something to believe in and not just to preach it, but to actually live by it.

Kris runs careful fingertips along the top of Adam's spine where the skin is soft all the way to the very bottom where the skin is stretched tight against the swell of his hips.

He doesn't second guess anything, (shouldn't have, before, either,) and closes his eyes again just as everything in the room glows orange gold.

He falls asleep tucked back-to-back with Adam and doesn't need to believe anything because it's easy enough to just live.


End file.
